Senior Database Engineer ​/ Specialist

Cape Town, South Africa | Posted on 14/08/2026

We are looking for a Senior Database Specialist to join an enterprise technology environment, with a strong focus on database architecture, performance optimisation, automation and database ecosystem integration.

The successful candidate will play a key role in developing and enhancing automated database builds, monitoring capabilities and enterprise database solutions, while supporting performance, security, scalability and operational efficiency.

• Define and contribute to firmwide database strategies and technology roadmaps .
• Design and implement DBaaS patterns across physical and virtualised infrastructure.
• Develop database build standards, automation and build support .
• Drive database ecosystem integration across tooling, monitoring and security.
• Develop and maintain database security engineering standards .
• Develop and enhance automated database builds using Unix Shell, Perl, Python, SQL and PL/SQL .
• Develop and implement monitoring and control centre solutions covering availability, utilisation, capacity trends and overall database health.
• Design and implement database solutions aligned to existing enterprise architecture.
• Analyse database workloads and performance to identify bottlenecks and optimisation opportunities.
• Define safe concurrency limits and recommended scaling strategies.
• Analyse controlled load test results and workload versus performance.
• Identify and optimise high-impact queries, including query rewrites, indexing and execution plans.
• Eliminate inefficient polling patterns and improve processing architecture.
• Develop optimal data retention strategies and reduce database footprint and growth risk.
• Develop and implement database performance optimisation plans.
• Support balanced workload distribution across the database environment.

• Experience with database architecture, performance optimisation and enterprise database environments .
• Strong hands-on SQL and PL/SQL experience.
• Experience with Unix Shell scripting .
• Experience with Python and/or Perl for database automation.
• Experience developing/enhancing automated database builds .
• Experience with database monitoring, availability, capacity and health metrics .
• Strong understanding of query optimisation, indexing and execution plans .
• Experience identifying workload bottlenecks and performance issues .
• Experience with database security and enterprise standards .
• Understanding of source code control, modular programming and software release management .
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and communication skills.

A technically strong database specialist who can operate across database architecture, automation, performance engineering, monitoring and optimisation , while communicating effectively with senior management, business stakeholders and wider technical teams.